Can the Peace be Won - 1941

September 28, 1941 - HENRY P. VAN DUSEN, Professor, Union Theological Seminary, New York City

In 1941, Henry P. Van Dusen, a Professor at Union Theological Seminary, delivered a speech over the British Broadcasting System during World War II. Speaking to the British public, Van Dusen emphasizes his strong personal and professional ties to Great Britain before addressing the United States' slow move toward full participation in the conflict. He asserts that American entry is inevitable, noting a recent shift in U.S. policy toward military action, but identifies three main obstacles to immediate, unified American action: deeply rooted national insularity, profound disillusionment with pre-war world politics, and the failure to present the war as having compelling objectives beyond self-defense or aiding Britain. Ultimately, Van Dusen concludes that the greater concern is not whether the war will be won, but whether the peace can be secured afterward, urging Christians in both nations to unite in working toward a lasting world order.

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The original speech text is provided below:

CAN THE PEACE BE WON?

By HENRY P. VAN DUSEN, Professor, Union Theological Seminary, New York City

To the British Public over British Broadcasting System, London, September 28, 1941

I SPEAK to you as one linked by ties of peculiar intimacy

with Great Britain. Most of the theology I know was

learned at the feet of two Scottish theologians. Scot-

land gave me albeit most unwillingly-one of her most

talented daughters as my bride. My eldest son, born close

to the heart of Midlothian, may claim with equal right

British or American citizenship; but at the stern of his toy

battleship there flies the Union Jack; and he proudly pro-

claims himself a loyal subject of His Majesty the King. So,

you see, I come among you in the happy, though not always

easy, relationship of a son-in-law.

I speak, too, as one who, since the first hour of the war,

has been convinced that Nazism could be overthrown only

with the full participation of the United States, that Amer-

ica was certain ultimately to come in, and that the sooner

the better.

I speak, finally, as one whose principal mission here is to

bring from the churches of America messages of affection,

of admiration and of gratitude to the Christians of Great

Britain.

A question which I know lies very close to the surface of

many minds is: "Why are the people of the United States

so slow to awaken to the deeper meaning of the conflict,

so hesitant to face the ultimate issue of full participation?"

Let me say at once that the present position is definitely

encouraging. For some months you have been misled by

those who told you that the United States was teetering on

the brink of the final and irrevocable plunge. That was

never true. Until Thursday, September 11, the outlook was

dark. In the perspective of history the President's speech

of that evening may prove the most momentous of all his

utterances. He himself had said that "convoy mean shooting

and shooting means war." Now he has gone far beyond

convoys and he has ordered the initiative in shooting. The

third step is inescapable. The United States is now defi-

nitely across the divide. Advance into full participation,

while it may take longer than we wish, it ultimately is in-

evitable. And the united strength of the British Common-

wealth and the United States is invincible.

Nevertheless, I should like to explain some of our diffi-

culties in moving American opinion to action. Let me speak

of three. Those who would understand the normal attitude

of Americans toward the war must keep constantly in mind

first one basic fact: the sentiment of national insularity is

deeply rooted in the American consciouness. It is a revered

historic tradition; it is psychologically inevitable; it is the

dictate of short-sighted national self-interest.

The policy of aloofness from foreign conflicts is first of

all a revered inheritance from our "Founding Fathers." But

the sentiment of national insularity also truly reflects the

normal and indeed inevitable attitude of the average Amer-

ican. He lives a thousand miles from any sea-coast and four

thousand miles from any European or Asiatic nation, any

potential enemy. Although his grandparents, or his great-

great-great-grand-parents may have immigrated from Europe,

he is claimed by no compelling sentiments of memory or

debtorship. His is a relationship which breeds solicitude

prompting generosity, but not responsibility leading to part-

nership. Few Europeans ever appreciate the inevitable con-

sequences of such geographical remoteness upon the men-

tality of a whole people.

But the sentiment of national insularity is far more than

a matter of tradition and physical remoteness. If policy

were to be determined by short-range national self-interest,

a strong argument can be advanced for American with-

drawal from all compromising associations with foreign na-

tions into the security of continental self-sufficiency and

self-protection. Let me be quite clear: I believe that a free

and democratic United States and Hitler cannot exist in

the same world; I have done what I could to persuade my

countrymen to that conviction. But it must be said in all

honesty that the case is by no means over-whelmingly con-

vincing. It becomes less convincing with each passing day

as British strength grows and Russia maintains her heroic

resistance. Let us suppose that, in those dark days of July

1940, when France collapsed and Britain, almost denuded

of material at Dunkirk, was daily threatened by invasion—

those days when President Roosevelt, in secrecy and with-

out authorization by either Congress or people, stripped

America of her land defences and sent them across to you-

suppose that, from those days, we had held for our own

defences every plane and gun and tank and ton of raw

material which have crossed the Atlantic; suppose every

energy of national economy and people had been set to the

one purpose of rendering North America defensively im-

pregnable. Might not the United States by now have been

secure against attack, as we certainly are not today? We

abhor the views of Colonel Lindbergh and former President

Hoover. Let us not suppose that they lack a persuasive

case. Moreover, it is a case fully in accord with accepted

axioms of statecraft. I said: "If national policy were to be

determined solely by national self-interest."

But by what other consideration is the foreign policy of nations

traditionally determined, especially in so vital a matter as

entrance into major war? Only once has America departed

from this policy of national isolation-under Mr. Wilson's

leadership in the last war. She is unlikely to forsake it again

unless through similar motives.

AMERICAN DISILLUSIONMENT

So we come to a second factor. Virtually all Americans

are profoundly disillusioned over the development of world

politics in the interval between the wars. Very generally

they fail to face the measure of America's responsibility for

that debacle. We initiated the retreat from responsibility;

other nations followed the evil example. Americans are not

alone in uniting sharp judgment upon the shortcomings of

other nations with blithe indifference to their own. They are

perhaps peculiarly susceptible to that hypocrisy. The late

Lord Lothian, who understood us and believed in us, used

to say chaffingly: "You Americans are incurably idealistic

about our foreign policy; incurably realistic about your

own."

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that each successive step

in that bitter sequence-Manchuria, Ethiopia, the Rhine-

land, Spain, Albania, Munich, Prague-has served to aggra-

vate disillusionment. But this prevailing attitude is due

also to disease within the national organism. The past two

decades have been an era of lush comfort in life, an era

of "debunking" in thought. The former has bred a certain

measure of softness-softness of physique, of morale, of

character. The latter has bred cynicism of spirit. And

cynicism and softness-blood-cousins-are unpromising par-

ents for an hour when the security of civilization is threat-

ened. The whole thing comes to sharper focus in the

attitude of youth. You will best understand what I am

describing if you recall attitudes among your own youth,

certainly in the universities, as late as 1938-those youth

whom Mr. A. A. Milne has celebrated as "The Lost Gen-

eration"—those same youth who have become the warriors

of the skies today ringing the shores of this isle with a

flying wall of impenetrable gallantry. I have confidence

that our youth, when claimed by similar demands, will re-

spond with not dissimilar heroism and fidelity. But they

must have a cause worth the ultimate sacrifice.

This leads directly to my last point. American opinion

has moved less speedily than we have wished. We have not

been altogether happy in the fashion in which the cause has

been urged upon the American people. It has been presented

almost entirely in terms of self-defense or aid for Britain.

We have been handicapped by lack of clear, positive, and

compelling objectives beyond the overthrow of Nazism.

Please understand that we are fully alive to the cogent

reasons which have led to the postponement of a formal

declaration of peace aims. I am raising no questions as to

the wisdom of that policy. I am concerned to report its

effect upon the American problem.

The policy of the American Government is, I think, now

reasonably assured. By no means does that assure the unity of

the American people and their single-minded concentration

upon the task ahead. We have just about exhausted the

possibilities of moving the American people through the

appeal to self-security or to aid for Britain. The lesson from

the last war is clear. The American people did not believe

themselves entering that war to save their own security,

but to secure a great possibility for the whole world, includ-

ing themselves. So, today. Recall that two compelling fac-

tors in your situation are absent from ours. You are face

to face with a threat of annihilation demanding national

unity. And you have a mighty centuries-old national tradi-

tion as the basis of that unity. We are not face to face with

imminent peril. And if unity is to be achieved, it cannot be

through recourse to the past, but through concentration upon

a goal ahead claiming and steeling the national will. As

things are now going, you will have our formal partnership

in the struggle. You will not have the all-out enlistment of

our people without which victory can hardly be made certain.

CAN THE PEACE BE WON?

But much more is at stake. The great question regarding

America has never been whether she would enter the war:

it has been whether the United States would remain in the

peace. That is still the larger and graver uncertainty. I

should be less than candid if I did not report to you that

the misgiving which today haunts the minds of our most

thoughtful people, little spoken but silently pervasive, is not

"Will the war be won?" but "Can the peace be won?"

The parallels between 1914-1919 and 1939 to that date

when peace shall be written are only too obvious. Will those

parallels carry through into and beyond the next Versailles?

What assurance have we against a repetition of that tragic

aftermath? Is this not the most fateful question of all.

That is the reason, as I believe, special importance attaches

to the relations between Christians of the United States and

of Great Britain. In the making of peace the significant

divisions will not be, as will be made to appear, between

victors and vanquished or even between the nations allied

in victory. They will be within nations. They will be

between men who know and trust no other principles and

arrangements than those which twice in a quarter-century

have brought us to holocaust-between them and men who

are profoundly committed to principles and structures which

can assure world order, not for a brief interlude, but for

the long future. To believe in and attempt such a peace

requires spiritual vision and experience transcending national

loyalties and the rutted habits of history, and spiritual re-

sources of magnanimity, patience and a firm resolve.

OUR REAL PROBLEM

I know nowhere where the apostles of such a peace are so

hopefully to be sought as in the leadership of the Churches of

Great Britain and the United States. The great necessity

is that those who so envision the peace should discern clearly

where our real problem lies-not between our nations but

within each nation; that they should see that the bonds.

which unite like purposed people of our two nations are

more intimate and more commanding of allegiance than

those which join us with fellow-countrymen, that we should

have thought and talked our way through to a common mind

as to what we seek; and then, that we should struggle

shoulder to shoulder within our respective nations for the

realization of that end upon which the hope of all humanity

hangs.